In search of card catalogues
New York Public Library photos by Chus.
We had two missions for our friend Chus to undertake in New York: go to the Balthus exhibition Cats and Girls at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and take pictures of the card catalogue entries for our Twisted books at the New York Public Library. The last time we looked at the card catalogue, they had Twisted volumes 1 to 6, and Manananggal Terrorizes Manila.
The last time we visited the NYPL, they still had card catalogues.
“The card catalogue cabinets are no longer there,” Chus reports. “All their card catalogues have been digitized. Nilecturan pa ako nung matandang librarian na kung gusto ko daw kunan ng litrato eh mag-punta daw ako sa antique store at gumawa ako ng gaya ng sinaunang card file. (The old librarian told me that if I wanted to take pictures of card catalogues, I should go to an antique store and make facsimiles of ancient card files.)”
Haha, napagalitan ng librarian! (Haha, scolded by the librarian.)
“Twisted volume 6 is missing,” Chus writes. “Someone borrowed it. The call number is JFE 02-18102.”
Suddenly we really need to have an old card catalogue in the house. To organize our books. The “Don’t touch anything, I know where everything is” classification system has worked for us so far, but we like indexing stuff.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
December 18th, 2013 at 15:35
I’d love to own a card catalogue just like that. I wonder if the ones at the UP Main Lib are still there. I could almost smell the wood and rust and yellowed paper…